


fool's journey

by hyksieji



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Analysis, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Secret Identity, zuko is pretty... i don’t make the rules
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26031073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyksieji/pseuds/hyksieji
Summary: After his banishment, he’s put onto a merchant boat, one of the few that still travel to the Earth Kingdom during wartime. It makes sense to dump him off overseas, considering that his father wouldn't want Fire Nation citizens to see the former Crown Prince.That night, he goes to bed late, the steady rocking of the boat lulling him to sleep.He dreams of a baby. Swaddled in gossamer cobwebs and moth-wing blankets, the babe rests in ignorant bliss. Their forehead lies against a delicate collarbone, the baby curling into the chest of (words elude him, for this primordial entity has no name he can comprehend. He settles on the term mother because at the end of the day, being a mother is her sworn duty, one she gladly accepts as she rocks the child in her arms.)Or: zuko is a good judge of character and a fortune teller. the gaang is impressed.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 86





	fool's journey

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Major (and minor!!) Arcana. you don't need to be acquainted with them to have an okay reading experience, although the knowledge may serve to enhance the references.  
> this entire work may or may not have been written for the sole reason that I rly wanted tarot cards and had no money :heartbreak:

The day he’s officially banished, he wakes up with a headache. 

The only areas on his face which he can still feel are the places in which the threadbare gauze digs into his skin. The sockets of his eyes feel hollowed out and sore, the burn scorching his very skull. 

His chest cavity feels looser than it has in ages, though, as if his ribcage has retracted from it’s sworn duty of protecting the malleable inner organs.

(He plays around with the idea of them all going squish.)

His father doesn’t bother waving him off when he’s thrown out of the palace. Not that Zuko had expected him to, either, but to say that he wasn’t hurt would be a blatant lie.

Azula doesn’t wave him off either, but he spies something out of one of the extravagant, paned windows that looks reminiscent of a topknot. He doesn’t think about it. 

After his banishment, he’s put onto a merchant boat, one of the few that still travel to the Earth Kingdom during wartime. It makes sense to dump him off overseas, considering that his father wouldn't want Fire Nation citizens to see the former Crown Prince. He knows that at least one of the crewmembers has been sent to watch him, and as he looks for the implant, the mole offers a nod of notice to his imploring gaze.

He goes to bed late, the rocking of the boat lulling him to sleep.

He dreams of a baby. Swaddled in gossamer cobwebs and blankets crafted of moth-wings, the babe rests in ignorant bliss. Their forehead lies against a marble collarbone, the baby curling into the chest of (words elude him, for this primordial entity has no true name. He settles on the term mother because at the end of the day, being a mother is her sworn duty, one she gladly accepts as she rocks the child in her arms.)

She smiles when he extends his arms in a plea, sea-star gold eyes crinkling at the corner as she gives him the baby to hold. 

He looks down into his arms. As a rule of thumb, Zuko has never been that big on babies, finds them loud and borderline scary, so it eludes him why he would even-

Oh. 

_Oh._

He’s only known this child for a grand total of however hazy dream time mechanics work, but he would kill everyone in the room and then himself if anything happened to them. It seems almost strange, to feel such intense adoration and love for this child. Love for their chubby fingers and dumb eyes, their squishy smile, and irrational faith. 

(faith in the world, for they are too young to comprehend any semblance of danger. such is the deluded nature of children.) 

He wonders if they are a firebender as well— it was the only rational explanation for why their skin burns as hot as a small star.

A nagging thought in the corners of his brain reminds him that he needs to leave soon. He deposits the child within the mother’s arms and watches with growing horror as their skin sloughs off. With no barrier to protect it from the elements, flesh, sinew, and tissue proceeds to disintegrate, leaving only bones in her grasp. The mother throws back her head and wails. 

He wakes up in a cold sweat.

The implant watches him as he limps off the boat and heads eastward, his gaze sharp enough to slice judgment into unprotected, scaleless skin, and not bothering to be soft enough to balm the damage.

Blithely, Zuko wonders where Iroh is. At least Azula had been there to see his fall from grace, and while he knows that the display was brought on by nothing but cruelty maybe he can parse out a sliver of caring she held for him-

Iroh wasn’t even there. Some sickly, infuriated part of him imagines that maybe his uncle is dead in a ditch, decided that he should join his dear son in Agni’s eternal light. The thought is red, red, red, and it scares him.

He speeds up his pace, breaking out into a run after the ocean is no more than a soft lull behind him.

It’s more likely that Iroh is in the Earth Kingdom, or maybe one of the Water Tribes. While he knows that the Kingdom wouldn’t take very kindly to someone who tried to raze down their doors mere weeks beforehand, Iroh has always been well-connected.

A well-connected man, an immortalized general, a former heir to the Dragon Throne, and a weak, grieving old man.

At the fifth town he’s walked through, a poor, immolated wasteland of a town, he considers turning himself in the capital Ba Sing Se. He’s heard what the police do to firebenders, how they waterboard children of the sun in night-dark cells. Maybe they would even kill him, and the thought makes his breath break. It would be fitting for a traitor of the holy crown to die in a godless country, cursing people who spoke in dialects foreign to him. People who would soon meet their extinction, if Ozai’s word was to be believed.

Extinction? The word skitters on his skin with uncomfortable unfamiliarity. 

Watercolor paintings of gore stand proudly before his mind, flaunting their contents. Jaws loose with the stillness that comes from death before rigor mortis can set in, pallor defining faces and outlines of catatonic bodies. Flame seared into exposed flesh, the smell of soot heavy in the air. Clouded eyes and disgustingly human skin. Vulturatrosses do not grace the skies with their wingspans just yet, and the ground scavengers will not come to salvage a meal until the area has been deemed safe by the beetles and parasites.

Zuko has long since tried to suppress being faint of heart. Attempted to fully extract it from his system when Azula tried to show him how to properly gut and roast a turtleduck.

His fingers still tremble.

How many bodies would be civilians? Casualties are expected within a war, written in mocking tones, and found in the terms and agreements section of this sacred practice. Each side will have prepared for this, prepared with cold cannons and human militia. If causalities are a war byproduct, the currency would be in soldiers-

Soldiers. The 41st division begs for a role in the painting, and there they are, in wobbling brushstrokes and muddled burgundies. He can’t make out a clear picture yet, the colors dulled by warring perspectives.

A set of cards lain out on a table call out to him, snatch his attention with pristine reds and whites. Turned with their front sides facing down, they are stark against the soft brown of cracked clay. A vain, simpering thing. With sudden clarity he hasn’t felt since he could no longer see the palace spires behind him, he decides to play a parodied version of ‘he loves me, he loves me not.’

He thinks of a set of rules for the game. If he draws an odd card, the soldiers are dead. If he draws an even card, they’re alive. Assuming that card decks worked the same within the Earth Kingdom as they did in the Fire Nation, there should be an even chance for either option. He delegates the queens as odd and the kings as even, and with a childish sense of entitlement decides that the jacks and joker should be even as well.

He lets his hand skim the pile. He feels strangely euphoric, the feeling undercut with growing dread. He begins drawing out a card, before hesitating and flicking it off to the side. He tries again, good eye scanning all of the cards on display, before taking one and flipping it.

Delicate papyrus meets his eyes, and his fingers go slack. He can’t read the numbers emblazoned on the corner, but he counts and recounts and counts again. Nine winking spheres of water laugh up at him, the sound mocking the rise and fall of a dead man’s bated breath. 

The card is upside down, and while that fact shouldn’t be important, he files it away anyways.

(“Nines are unlucky, Zuko. Gifts, even— especially to close family, should only be given in 3’s or fives.” A face still youthful with baby fat scrunches and pouts.

“But mom, that doesn’t make any sense!” Ursa boops his nose, prompting a giggle, and she tells him that the number nine stands for suffering and agony. That numbers and even small connotations to words hold great meaning in the world.

“The spirits gave us our language, my baby.” She kisses him on the forehead, entirely too soft. “They must’ve accounted for the similarities, no?”

He yawns, tired and sleepy and all too content, “what if the spirits aren’t real?”

That night, Ursa prays to the spirits to forgive her first-born, that he merely does not fully grasp the concept of the deities who rule their world.)

He produces a small enough flame to inconspicuously light the corner of a card, the aged paper crumbling to ash.

A sick, ugly feeling rolls up his lungs into his throat as he watches the card disintegrate. For what are simple playing cards, to dictate who lives or dies? Neither spirit nor fate could’ve possibly gifted accuracy, and even if they did, who is he to trust in spirits or fate? 

The sudden thought to burn all of the cards comes to him, and he lets the embers left in his hand rekindle on the rest of the cards. One remains separate from the pile, though, and he knows that no matter how hard the wind may howl, it will not begin to catch.

Later, townsfolk will recall that they saw a young boy leaving a tavern entrance. Loose bandages encircled one eye, but they did nothing to conceal the tear stricken look of the uncovered one. The boy held a single playing card in his hand as he left town, they will whisper. Young women and men will gossip about a pretty boy with auric eyes. Mothers will fret over his injuries and the tell-tale cut of his ribs. Ancient, withered crones will wonder if he is a war-orphan, and what happened to his face. Old men will grumble about a perfectly good deck of cards lost, and games of old maid will be put on hold.

A side note, for those interested in the ascetic culture of this town: as a general game rule, the people in this community have long played by nixing jokers. The original rule was for kings, but after rumors of secret police spread throughout the countryside, worry about treasonous words spiked. The conduct became used as a test to see who were town residents and who were outsiders.

Due to the parity of the number zero, many Earth Kingdom scholars have even gone as far as to consider it the ‘most even’ quantity in a numerical alphabet. That being said, some people do not consider zero as a number at all, much less an even or odd one.

A side note, for those merely curious: The Fool is as odds with the rest of the major arcana. Being zero, there is no concise way to discover which part of the order he truly is. “At birth, the Fool is set in the middle of his own individual universe. He is strangely empty (as is zero), but imbued with a desire to go forth and learn. This undertaking would seem to be **folly,** but is it?” 

Common depictions of the Fool shows him on a cliffside’s edge, arms outstretched. It is unclear whether he realizes the sheer amount of danger he is in.

It is on the fifteenth night that Zuko’s scar begins to burn. He’s long since gotten rid of the bandages, and he noted with a sense of vapid awe that people stare more at covered wounds than ones. As if scars such as the burn marring his face are normal, and the possibility that someone had the foresight or ability to treat those wounds was peculiar in itself. He remembers asking a girl on his travels about it. He has long since forgotten her name.

“Getting hurt by fire is a lot more common than people give credit for. Personally, I think publicizing burns or scars lends itself to some sick form of patriotism? If you go into town, you’ll find posters of the Fire Lord—Ozai, I think his name is—laying a fistful of flame to his own son’s face. That, or fire benders roasting each other alive to eat. With stuff like these up, people immediately jump to the conclusion of ash maker,” he narrowly avoids a hard flinch at the term, “and it almost makes them feel better about themselves. As if the only trauma, mental and physical, inflicted comes from the Fire Nation.” he tilts his head in confusion, and she sighs. Her voice is bitter and iced as she turns to him and says, “It’s not like we haven’t done any harm to people at all. We aren’t in the wrong, but our customs aren’t high and mighty, either.” 

The girl’s eyes were fire nation yellow, although her other features were resolute tells of the Earth Kingdom, down to the structure of the bone ridge of her nose. Her clothes were loose and cropped, and he could see a jagged scar creeping up her exposed abdomen and disappearing under her shirt. He likens it to a long, sharp cut, most likely from metal or stone. Her arms are also littered with smaller, concentrated burns- he realizes with a growing horror that they’re shaped like handprints.

She sees his eyes straying, and barks out a laugh. “It didn’t bleed that much, but the bruising was hell to hide from my mama. Between you and me, if that poor lady found out, I think she might’ve died right on the spot! Marrying Ba did nothing to shake her fear of benders.”

The memory fades away, and ugly panic crescendoes in his chest, sings of infections and wounds undergoing the process of necrosis, how people lose whole limbs to similar phenomenons.

He wracks his brain trying to figure out symptoms, tries to remember days in the healers sitting next to a Fire Lady, but alarm trumps rational thought in his head. Death no longer seems friendly, and he cannot regard its prying eyes with the cold detachment he had when he had first thought of dying in Ba Sing Se. Maybe it’s due to the fact that in daylight, Agni can see him, can see his writhing form dying in a truly dishonorable way. A firebender should die with grace and beauty, with honor and respect, not from an infection from a burn scar, of all things.

Those ugly, technicolored images from before creep into his thoughts. What beauty is there in being dead, what grace to limbs strewn across the floor? Honor doesn’t matter to the dead, either. The thoughts sing treason, and as Zuko’s vision blurs and his body collapses, he finds he doesn’t really care.

Azula and Ozai have never put in much faith into spirits or gods, but Zuko prays that he will get out of this alive, that when he’ll die it will be in a way his father could be proud of. 

Maybe somewhere, a god is listening, casts its near-omnipresent eye to a country it does not call home. Maybe it extends fingers of sunlight and ash to caress the forehead of one who is also far from home, as well. Maybe it decides to cast a blessing onto a banished, bitter young noble. Maybe it does so as to rekindle his faith in god. Maybe it does so for its own amusement, curious to see how things will turn out. For no god solely has one’s best interest in mind, would rather indulge in hedonistic indulgence till the end of time. For being a  
god is not begotten by pity and allowances.  
When Zuko wakes up, he’s greeted with the sight of a thatched roof. The smell of incense hangs heavy in the air, and a damp cotton cloth lies across his scar. His limbs lie heavy with exhaustion, and it’s the exhaustion of the living. After this realization, relief floods him, refusing to leave even when a figure appears in the hazy edges of his vision.

“You’re awake? Are you hungry?” he nods, enjoying the soprano of their voice. “I don’t know if you’ll die from the infection or not.” Their words are no longer comforting.

“What happened?” Oh, his voice is a wreck. By the strain of his vocal cords and the ache in his throat, he must’ve been out at least a full day.

“I found you in the forest about a week ago! Aunt Wu said we might have an important visitor soon, and I wasn’t about to let the opportunity of having found him slip out of my grasp.” A full week— Aunt Wu?

“Aunt Wu?” they squint at him from their herb pile, where they are making an adhesive-looking paste of some sort. 

“She’s a fortune-teller from the nearby village. Her predictions have complete accuracy, and she also told me that a sprinkling of powdered silver,” they show the shinier flecks in the paste to him, “helps treat burn infections!”

He asks her what she would do if he was dangerous, if he wasn’t the person this lady had spoken of, and she shrugs. “I’m not the best judge of character. Nevertheless, if Wu doesn’t vouch for you, I doubt you’ll get out of here alive.”

They rub the paste into his scar, and he can dully feel the tissue tingle. Fresh bandages are reapplied, and he finds them a pleasant comfort rather than a constricting weight. He asks where this ‘Aunt Wu’ is, and with a wave and a request to ask for their fortune as well the healer sends him west, to a large _siheyuan._

A shriveled woman dressed to the nines with expensive makeup and flowing robes sits in a large square room by a central hearth. Her face is wisened and sweet, and he cannot help but liken her to Iroh. She offers him a hand, and he shakes it, as is the custom within the Earth Kingdom.

He cannot liken her to anything but an empress, regal and unperturbed. He wonders why that was the first comparison he made—it should feel like a blemish to his mother’s name, comparing her to a random Earth Kingdom citizen, but the comparison seems so _right,_ slots ever so snugly into his brain.

Her eyes flash with something sad and heavy, and he assumes that the pity in her expression is aimed towards his scar.

“I’m assuming you’re here for a reading?” he nods, afraid. The air around her is heavy with heat and power, practically tangible. 

“The healer- they sent me here to see if my,” he gestures towards the left side of his face, “scar’s infection is fatal or not.” he must look doubtful because she laughs, before reaching for his hand.

“You’ll have to open your fist before I can read your hand.” he acquiesces, and she begins looking at his palm lines.

Curiosity seizes him, shuns out any social professionalism he might have had. “Do you just read hands? Is there anything else you do?”

“I do bones as well. Cloud reading is finicky, but I’m rather well versed in it too. Palm reading is the most therapeutic for my old body.”

“...how am I supposed to know you’re not lying?”

“You’re a tenacious one, aren’t you? And you’ve had a lot of undeserved misfortune befall you. Anyways, your scar will be fine.” her eyes twinkle. “Are you a firebender?” he startles and slips into a defensive kata on instinct.

“How did you know?”

“Your eyes are too yellow to be from these parts, and the palms of people can’t tell lies, no matter how skilled the owner is.” Her explanation clears up absolutely nothing. “Oh, and you’re a noble as well? That makes this a lot more interesting.”

“Won’t my scar need more healing? I’m pretty sure if I just leave it the way it is it won’t heal.”

She shrugs. “All I can say is that it’ll end up fine. Palmistry isn’t an exact science.”

“Doesn’t it seem stupid to you? I mean- don’t people have free will or something?”

“Everything has a resolved end. Free will is important, but it’s more a loose construct to allow a predetermined end to exist.”

“Who gets to choose what happens?”

“The spirits, of course-”

“By simply acting in any way, aren’t we throwing aside fate? If everything happens for a greater purpose,” his hand finds his way to his scar, a gesture that Wu does not miss. “

“My methods do take free will into consideration, young one. The two concepts are more closely intertwined than you may think. What I’m saying is that you won’t end up dying from that scar, but the events that happen in the middle are all up to you and,” her voice hesitates a singular beat, long enough that he notices but short enough to make him think nothing of it, “chance.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve never actually told anyone that- most people seem to believe that free will and fate cannot exist with the other. You seem the exact same, but,” it feels important to tell you. Maybe it’s because I wanted to see how a firebender would react.”

Even with his scorn of the concept of fate, he can’t help but find the concept of being able to divine something about anything. He wonders if even a master liar such as Azula could have her personality and future be divined from a reading.

...on second thought, wouldn’t she just call the traits out for substituting some weird form of a placebo effect? That people only accept the readings due to them being overwhelmingly positive, capitalizing on just about any flaw/trait? Would she be right? He supposes that there may be even slightly scientific reasons that reading and divination forms actually work, but that they may capitalize more on human psychology than real spiritual magic or anything involving fate. But isn’t that directly contradictory towards the notion of free will? The lines in your hand will always tell the same story, so isn’t your fate always pre-determined? And that’s just running on the idea that there’s a dichotomy between the concepts of free will and- 

A hand places itself on his shoulder. Aunt Wu looks at him with the same amount of pity she had last time, except this time the expression is undercut with amusement. “You look like your brain is a second away from combustion, kid.”

“This seems like bullshit.”

A raised brow. “Oh?” 

“It’s not possible to tell the future or things about people by something like their palms! That’s stupid!”

“You might not want to say that. Who knows who could be listening.” It sounds like a threat, and as rash as he tends to be, he holds his tongue. Omnipresence is something every child in the fire nation is taught at a young age, for the sun is never truly gone, never truly lets you out of its sights. “I used to feel the same way when I was a child. The readings did interest me, but I liked them more for the colorful pictures and fun ideas. I didn’t fully believe in my reading skills, thought that I was scamming people too gullible for their own good.” “But I’m older now, have learned some of the tips and tricks of the trade, and realized when my predictions about something as monumental as the possibility of the nearby volcano erupting were correct, I started to fully believe in my skills.”

“What about science? There are ways to disprove everything you’ve said!”

“I give predictions, and so does your science. They don’t have to be independent of each other, you realize.” 

“I don’t understand! Why don’t you guys just surrender to the Fire Nation? Our technology-” he can see the exact moment where Wu’s pity canyons.

“Have you ever considered that maybe the reason why our country doesn’t seem as technologically advanced as yours is because we’re fighting the war? Do you really think that the fire nation would willingly give up their technology to us?”

“But—” 

“Child, we haven’t had the reprieve granted by your glorious nation to try and create the technology of our own. The Southern Water Tribe, in particular, probably doesn’t even have enough people to do more than pray they make it out of the season alive. And we are hardly primitive for not believing in the exact same things you do? After all,” her eyes glint with the anger of one who has seen war, one who realizes there is no glory in endless waste and bloodshed. “We don’t send our children into fights. We don’t believe in fighting one of our own for something such as ‘honor.’”

He flinches, and the big room suddenly seems bigger, gaudier. The torches flicker a little too high, and he can imagine Ozai’s form standing in front of him—

“That was callous of me, I apologize. A better example would’ve been what you benders seem like. There is no real scientific explanation for why you have the ability to bend elements, and the populace seems to believe in spirits giving us this power. If your country prides itself so much on its imperial firebenders, isn’t not believing in spirits blasphemous?” he could argue more, he really could, but a part of him remembers a girl with firebender burns and earthbender scars, and a part of him is so very tired, wants nothing more than to keel over and finally rest.

He nods, jerkily, and her voice softens again.

“Would you like to be my apprentice?”

“Why me? You’ve already shown your distaste of firebenders.” His eyes stay tired, but his gaze switches lanes from apathy to interest.

“I said nothing of the sort. You see, my old bones are getting weary, and could use some assistance.

“You know what bones feel?” his eyes stray into the corner of the room, where they lie, the marrow long since extracted. He has a sudden recollection of an infant, curled into the crook of an elbow.

“No, you idiot, not the osteomancy bones— the bones within my body.”

Her words didn’t act as a consolation. “You can speak to the bones within people?”

“What— no? Other than the healing properties professional waterbending has, I doubt that anyone is able to influence what is inside your body. What’s your final answer?”

He considers her offer. “Why should I want to apprentice for a random old lady in some Earth Kingdom shithole?” 

She smiles, the grin full of crocodile teeth. “After our chat, I’m feeling slightly predisposed to telling the rest of the village that you aren’t our esteemed guest, but rather a terrible firebender.”

“Your fortune said I wouldn’t die, though.”

“It said that you wouldn’t die from a burn infection.”

“Are you... blackmailing me?”

“Me? Good goddess, never— as you said, I’m just a random old lady in some Earth Kingdom shithole.”

He glares at her. “I’ll be back in two weeks.”

“What did she say?”

“It’ll be fine if you take care of it for a while longer.” the healer beams before going into the back room.

He wonders if he’s lying to them by telling them this, before remembering Wu’s speech. The details slipped out of his mind, but the long and short allowed him to do whatever he wanted, right? So it should be fine.

Two weeks pass, and his scar soon becomes completely healed. The healer unravels the gauze and attempts to send him out with a pat on the back which he flinches away from.

He walks out into town, and people immediately begin to stare. For this town has not been touched heavily by war, evident in the well-fed children and abundant grown men. Injuries of his sort are whispered about in teashops and considering that no one in town had actually seen his face before, it seems rational that they would be wary.

The townsfolk had only caught sight of a kid in the infirmary- elusive enough that some had begun speculating that there was a ghost haunting the building. The healer, startled by this information, went to Aunt Wu to see if there actually was a ghost. The village crowded after her into the _siheyuan,_ and the fortuneteller examined the palm of the healer’s hand for roughly a minute, before saying that there was no ghost. That being said, however, some of the townsfolk could’ve sworn that she said something about gullibility being rampant, and how that was scarier than any spirit or haunting. 

Long and short, nobody knows who he is, other than the fact that he’s not a native. His scar scares away anyone who might’ve been friendly enough to strike up a conversation.

He remembers why he hates crowds. 

Wu comes out of her building and immediately catches on to the situation. Pushing her way to his side, she gently places a hand on his shoulder, and announces to the whole town, “This is my new apprentice! I hope to train him in my footsteps, and allow him to become a master diviner. His name is— ah, what is your name again?” the last part is softer, almost as if she knows he doesn’t have a true answer, and he hesitates.

The logical reason for not wanting to disclose his real name to the village would be the possibility of a connection being made to this Zuko and the Fire Lord’s son. (The World swims in his vision, and he finds his thoughts returning to a dream of a mother and a baby. He makes an unconscious decision to exit the world, for his journey will let him reenter it once he has fully—)

He cannot bear to be Zuko any more. He has merely been parading in his stead, as the Fire Prince was a living corpse when he spoke to a girl with firebender and earthbender scars alike. The Crown Prince died when he prostrated at his father’s feet and begged for salvation. Zuko died when he dreamt of a mother clutching to bones. By using the name, it would be the final desecration on his grave.

“My name is Lee.” and the words sound like whispered prayer.

Maybe someone is listening for the invocation, hears it, allows the favor to be granted.

“Anticlimactic much,” Wu grouses under her breath, watching the boy frantically slip through the heavy doors to escape the stares of the crowd. She wonders if he’s a theater kid, or just naturally overdramatic.

Wu has always been perceptive. The first one to find spotted frog squirrels when summer came around, the first one to recognize which variations were poisonous by the markings on their backs. Maybe it came with the job, but she’s willing to bet on a curse from the spirits.

She sees how Fate looks at the boy with fondness, laughs at his antics, and watches his moves with lurid adoration. She does not pity him for that, because she knows firsthand that fortune’s love is a bearable one.

Fate has sunken its claws into her since she was a young child, since the minute she opened that damned book of cloud reading. She is held securely within its toothless maw, and she sees the gesture for what it is; a threat. Fate is not a motherly animal keeping its young from harm, it is a temperamental being who does not take kindly to being messed with. Nevertheless, it does hold a decent amount of attachment for those under its care. Its sibling chance is the one Wu is afraid of, for it holds itself with an even crueler disposition. 

Fickle and prone to toying with its victims, chance holds die of many colors and shapes in closed fists. 

She sees how it winds itself around the boy’s neck, how it perches on his head, and kisses his fingers. She knows Agni may have requested for it to bind itself to the child, but that even if the sun hadn’t extended his warmth as an offering, chance would’ve found this boy anyways.

She wonders how long it will take before it sucks the marrow out od his bones and slips into their hollow husks.

For being chosen by chance is a fascinating thing, a destructive massacre of the human mind near-impossible to look away from.

For chance does not devote easily, and when it does, it smothers. A cruel, insecure lover, desperate to see how far its paramour will go for it. She wonders if it will kill him quickly or if it will stretch out his sure-to-be miserable life to its full extent.

She wonders if the spirits will mourn his mind alongside her when he descends into madness.

**Author's Note:**

> * **the fool:** _the zeroth card of the classical major arcana._  
>  _upright keywords: beginnings, innocence, a free spirit, adventure, idealism, spontaneity_  
>  _the upright fool encourages you to take risks, that the time of great opportunities and potential is now._
> 
> _reversed keywords: careless, distracted, naive, foolish, gullible, stale, dull_  
>  _the reversed fool scolds you for sitting on a decision for too long. it also appears as a warning of recklessness, engaging in activities detrimental to you and the people around you_
> 
> let me know if u wanna hear more!! comments n kudos are appreciated. 
> 
> (also if anyone wants to be my beta hmu... I'm not v confident in editing my own work)


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